FRANCE: Russian paratrooper Pavel Filatiev arrived in France to seek political asylum after fleeing his country fearing retaliation for a first-person account of the war in Ukraine published online on Sunday.
"I realized I wouldn't get anywhere here and that my lawyers could do nothing for me in Russia when I heard that higher-ups were sentenced to 15 years in prison for fake news," Filatiev told Agence France. Told - Press in the waiting area for asylum seekers at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.
According to his lawyer, Kamalia Mehtieva, "Pavel Filatiev was freed late afternoon" after receiving official permission to enter France, where he would have eight days to file an asylum claim.
"We are very pleased with this decision and will request political asylum in the coming days," Mehtieva said.
After taking leave from the army, the 34-year-old rejoined Russia's 56th Air Regiment based in Crimea last year.
When President Vladimir Putin launched his "special military operation" against Kyiv on February 24, paratroopers were sent to southern Ukraine.
Filatiev spent two months patrolling the major cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv before being forced to withdraw from the front due to an eye infection.
"We didn't have the moral right to attack another country, especially when it was the country closest to us," he wrote in a comprehensive 141-page section titled "ZOV" that he posted on the social network VKontakte in August.
The title, which is derived from the Russian word for "call", is composed of identification cards that were painted on military vehicles during the attack.
Filatiev rails against both the military state and Moscow's attack on Ukraine, which he believes is widely opposed by rank-and-file soldiers who are too afraid to speak up.
Filatiev paints a picture of a barely functional force that lacked training and equipment even before the offensive began.
He told Agence France-Presse that the armed forces "are in the same position in which Russia has fallen in recent years."
"Year after year the anarchy and corruption spread." Corruption, disorder and reckless attitude have reached unacceptably high levels.
I was in shock for the first few months, telling myself it couldn't be true. I realized by the end of the year that I didn't want to serve in such an army."
But he did not resign before the invasion of Ukraine began, and he found himself leading his unit in the south of the neighboring country.
“If the army was already peace-loving, corrupt and apathetic, it is clear that in wartime, in combat, it would come to the fore even more, and the lack of professionalism would be even more apparent,” Filatiev said.
Moscow's ruling class has been instrumental in "destroying the army inherited from the Soviet Union".
During his two months at the front, Filatiev insisted that his unit did not participate in abuses against civilians and prisoners, sparking worldwide outrage and accusations of war crimes by the Russian invaders.
He attempted to resign for health reasons after being evacuated to a military hospital in the Crimean city of Sebastopol, only to be threatened with an investigation if he refused to return to fighting.
He left Crimea in early August and published his war diary online.
Filatiev spent time traveling from city to city to avoid detection before fleeing the country, arriving in France via Tunisia this week.
"Why am I going into so much detail?" "I want people in Russia and around the world to understand how this war started and why people are still fighting it," he said.
"It's not because they want to fight, it's because they are in conditions that make it very difficult for them to leave," Filatiev said of the Russians.
"The army, the whole Russian society is afraid," he said.
According to Filatiev, only 10% of soldiers support the war, the rest are afraid to speak out.
"The protestors are afraid to say anything, afraid to leave." "They are afraid of the consequences," he explained.
If given asylum in France, Filatiev plans to "work towards the end of this war".
"I want at least young Russian men to go out there and get involved, so that they know what's going on."
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